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Thursday, March 24, 2016

"I can go on the road–because I can come home. I come home–because I am free to leave. Each way of being is more valued in the presence of the other. This balance between making camp and following the seasons is both very ancient and very new We all need both."–Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road
Writer Abroad just finished a wonderful memoir by Gloria Steinem. The best part (sorry to spoil) was the above quote at the end. I think most travelers, expatriates, and repatriates can probably relate to it.It wasn't until the end of Steinem's life that she actually had a permanent structure to call home. She traveled nomadically from place to place with her family and later, as an organizer. At the very end of her book she says:"My father did not have to trade dying alone for the joys of the road. My mother did not have to give up a journey of her own to have a home. Neither do I. Neither do you."In her repatriate way, Writer Abroad is discovering that you don't always need to live far from family to embrace the joys of traveling. Or to feel foreign (you can go to the local Asian grocery store for that). But what Writer Abroad is finding difficult in her home country is convincing her countrymen of the benefits of basic social programs that she enjoyed in Switzerland.She tries to convince any American that will listen that really, it's ok to demand public transport that doesn't leave you stranded. It's ok to demand paid family leave. It's ok to demand a healthcare system that won't leave you in debt if you have a medical issue.The hard thing (please someone explain why) is to find Americans who aren't afraid of a foreign version of better. Too many scream socialism in your face when they don't even understand its definition. This only shows Writer Abroad how badly some Americans need to travel. Because if you see the world, if you experience other ways of life, you come to understand that sometimes other nations have good ideas. America is not Denmark. Or Sweden. Or Switzerland. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't borrow some of their good ideas, does it?After all, T.S. Eliot once said, "Good writers borrow. Great writers steal."The same could be applied to nations too.

Writer
Abroad has experienced some of the things discussed in The Nation article and that’s why she really believes the end of
journalism to be one of the most dangerous issues facing America today.

Here’s why.
Once media companies (including some well-known newspapers you might recognize)
force freelance writers like those mentioned in The Nation article to sign contracts that force them to be entirely
liable for anything they write for that publication, you have basically ended
journalism’s role in upholding democracy. Because how can any writer afford to
write about controversial subjects and be held liable for their investigations—especially
if they involve large corporations with huge pockets? They can’t. So the
stories don’t get written.

This system
is not fair to journalists and it’s not fair to Americans who rely on
journalists to be watchdogs. What we have now is a media system that is owned
by corporations and run by corporations and that only tells the stories the
corporations want told.

What’s the
solution? Well, instead of reading what the press has to say, we should try to
read between the lines at what it is not
saying. For example, even when Bernie Sanders wins a state in the democratic
primaries, like Michigan, headlines about him are negative—he still doesn’t have a chance. To reinterpret these headlines
without the corporate spin, they would probably read: Bernie Sanders takes his revolution to new heights scaring an
establishment that depends on regular Americans to make up for their
billion-dollar tax breaks.

What else
tells Writer Abroad that something is wrong with journalism? Well, over the
last year, Writer Abroad has published essays and articles on many topics and
with many big publications. The topics that she’s been successful with are expat
and repatriate life, work-life balance, and parenting, etc. But she can’t seem
to get a positive essay about Bernie Sanders published anywhere. No. With those
pieces come rejections and/or silence from the big media companies. It’s frustrating.
And revealing.

What is the
solution? Well, it may be up to writers and journalists to develop their own
ways to get the stories out there. They can develop their own publishing
companies, their own blogs or social networks, etc. For instance, Writer Abroad
may post her pieces that are unacceptable to big media companies on her blog.
Because while Writer Abroad would rather have a million readers than 10,000, she
still thinks it’s more important that some of these topics get out there rather
than having them sit, waiting for eternity, for the slim possibility that they
will ever see the light of day on a corporate-owned publication masquerading as
today’s American newspaper.

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Writer
Abroad loves being back in the U.S. for one main reason (besides being close to
family): libraries. Writer Abroad loves libraries. Specifically libraries
filled with English books (no offense to all the Swiss libraries filled with
German books, of course).

Being an
author, sometimes she thinks she should buy every book she reads to support her
fellow writers. But the problem is, even though she has escaped her tiny Swiss
apartment and moved into a big American house, there is still no place to put
all the books she already has. Many are still sitting in their moving boxes in
the basement over a year later. (God bless American basements.)

She could
buy e-books, like she used to do when she was living abroad. But here’s a
little secret: she’s old fashioned. She loves actual paper books. Holding them.
Feeling their size and weight.

So sorry to
any authors she may have offended, but Writer Abroad does use her local library
almost every week. It’s a mere three blocks from her house. One of the main
reasons she chose the location of her house.

She’s found
some good books lately. Probably the best book she’s read this year is Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It proves that you don’t need a long book
to make a big statement. This book lets the reader see the world through the
point of view of a black man in present day America. It is horrific, eye
opening, and, if you’re not already a black American man, a way to see an
outsider’s view of America without getting a passport.

Which is
the dilemma, of course. It’s an outsider’s view of the U.S. told by an American
in the U.S. No American should ever be subjected to such outsider status in
their own country. But they are.

At one
point, Coates says, “The writer, and that was what I was becoming, must be wary
of every Dream and every nation, even his own nation. Perhaps his nation more
than any other, precisely because it was his own.”

Exactly.

That’s why,
if you’re not an outsider in America, you must go outside of America to be able
to write about your country in an honest way.

Moving to
Switzerland was Writer Abroad’s solution to seeing her own country, which has
inspired her next book, American Life: 30
Things I Wish I’d Known, which she is working on now. She couldn’t be
writing it without having left America. Sadly, Coates could have.

At one
point, Coates makes a point about U.S. exceptionalism. He says we need to step
outside of our country to see it for what it really is—often, a bully, both
globally and locally. Going abroad, if you’re a white American, will probably
make you come to similar conclusions. Or if you’re not going abroad, this book
will give you an outsider perspective. It should be required reading for every
American. For a majority of Americans, the book is a passport to another world:
their own.

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About Me

I’m an American writer who moved to Switzerland in 2006 and am now back in the US to determine if I can live anywhere else after being in a country filled with cheese, chocolate, and people who can pronounce my name. The author of Swiss Life: 30 Things I Wish I'd Known www.swisslifebook.com, and 99.9 Ways to Travel Switzerland Like a Local www.swisstravelbook.com, I have written about Switzerland for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN Travel, and many other publications.
Visit: www.chantalpanozzo.com

Copyright 2009 Chantal Panozzo. All content is sole property of the author and may not be reproduced in any form without permission. (But linking is welcome). Please contact the author for syndication or reprint inquiries.